There and back again.

I am back from my whirlwind trip up to the Bay Area. I packed an inordinate amount of fun and activity into three days and am now returning only a little worse for wear. I decided to take the 101 up this time instead of doing my normal interstate 5 cut over. Grabbed a quick bite in Santa Barbara.

My first stop on the journey was a visit to the famed musicologist Vlad Smythe's tony warren in Laguna Seca. Vlad has the finest private collection of live recorded rock and jazz music I have ever encountered. Thousands of hours of the juiciest stuff. Every wall in his library if full of the most wonderful recordings, from Miles Davis through the Beatles and it is such a treat to go through his archives. Tremendous video library as well, including interviews of people like Grace Slick that he shot when he was in the business.

I found a few nuggets in his gold mine to extract. A very rare 1952 Hank Williams recording full of chestnuts. He pulled out a copy of a Byrds concert from Amsterdam in 1970 that I had recalled from ages past. It had a version of Willin' that was sung by the then drummer, Gene Parsons. This is before Little Feat had even been formed. This version of the Byrds had the phenomenal guitar player Clarence White, late of the Kentucky Colonels and thought by many to be the greatest flatpicker ever. He was Tony Rice's major inspiration. The tape includes a lysergic version of Dylan's This Wheel's on Fire and just spanks. We stayed up past midnight listening to music and reminiscing, we have been friends for over thirty five years. Didn't play guitar with him this trip, but he is very gifted. Love hanging out with my old buds and love Mrs. Vlad and the kids.

In the morning we met Cam at a restaurant in Salinas. Salinas is a central California town that was home to John Steinbeck. Steinbeck worked on the nearby Spreckels Ranch and chronicled the darker side of farm life in the region. The town hated him until they figured out that they loved him, an event that coincided with the town father's seeing dollar signs when his name was mentioned. The Grapes of Wrath was banned by school boards and in August 1939, Kern County Board of Supervisors banned the book from the county's publicly funded schools and libraries. It was burned in Salinas on at least two different occasions. It is said that J.Edgar Hoover had the I.R.S. audit Steinbeck every year of his life, just to annoy him.

Salinas used to be known as the Salad Bowl of the country but now it is mostly known for its stunningly high homicide rate. Vlad told me that just last week some woman was wacked east of Blanco Rd. for wearing the wrong color t-shirt, the local crips not being big fans of the color red. I looked down at my red socks and gulped.

I ordered the biscuits and gravy and had to hear the inevitable crap about my cholesterol and clogged arteries. People, we have gone over this before - you get no extra points for leaving a good looking corpse. Oh yea, got this letter this week:


Robert,

It's bad enough, your fine food binges....but, I think you should discontinue your Mexican food witch hunt. You're getting like Morgan Spurlock. You really should slow down on all the unnecessary calories, fat, and cholesterol. For a guy with a previous history of heart problems you really don't need this artery abuse. You should enjoy good Mexican food occasionally, but this is getting ridiculous! 

SERIOUSLY

KJ  

I appreciate it KJ but tell me, just who in the hell is this Morgan Spurlock? And remind me to tell you about my menudo breakfast this morning. Serrano's in Temecula, quite good.  So anyway we are sitting in downtown Salinas, a town appropriated from the local indians around 1822 and named for a local salt marsh. Beautiful old bank buildings sit dormant and unattended or seriously underutilized. I asked Cam about the local color and he said that Oakland pimps are driving their girls down on the weekends and that there is a new midget hooker in town that I probably should see. I pass, not quite being up for that kind of excitement so early on my voyage.

I took my leave of the fellows and hit the road, driving up to the city to see BigD but first popping over to my friend Bill Warmboe's antique store to say a quick hello. Drove up to BigD's. His next big chemo appointment was scheduled for yesterday so we ran a few errands, grabbed a few games for his kids at Best Buy, washed his car and went out looking for food.

We stopped across from this really interesting sausage joint in the lower Haight, Rosamunde. Duck sausage with fig, are you kidding me? Chicken smoked with cherries? But the line was long and BigD didn't feel like waiting so we went to the barbecue joint across the street, Memphis Minnie's. Minnie's is one of those faux urban barbecue places. It had placards left and right from reviewers proclaiming it "best barbecue in the city." I thought it sucked. Wouldn't hold a candle to the dearly departed Flint's in Oakland. Real barbecue is a lifelong love/hate labor where one is getting up at 4:00 in the morning to feed the proper wood into the fire. Not prissy city food.

I ordered a sandwich of burnt end brisket on a good roll. The first bite told me that something was dreadfully wrong, I was left with a mouth full of grease. The second bite didn't get any better. I tried to dress it up with one of their four sauces, a northern carolina vinegar ( which I loathe), a southern carolina mustard, a really hot that wasn't and a standard red. Like putting lipstick on a cow, in this case. All I can really remember is a mouth full of grease. Not recommended.

We popped over to Faletti Market on Broderick for dessert. The Faletti brothers have been selling groceries in the Bay Area since the 1920's and the place is like a slicker Whole Foods. We split a pretty amazing slice of Tres Leches cake. Sweet, sinful and succulent. Moist and outrageous. Afterwards we drove through Golden Gate Park and then through the wealthy enclave of Sea Cliff and walked down to China Beach, the beach where the chinese immigrants had to live and camp in the 19th century.

Walking up and down the stairs BigD felt the need to tell me how he was in better shape than I was even while he is undergoing heavy duty chemo. Maybe so, I kept my mouth shut. What am I going to do, challenge a guy on chemo to a footrace? The chemo wipes his system out for about two week periods, he has to go through six of these infusions. My friend is trying to live a somewhat normal life in between, which has included riding his bike up in Marin. Have to take my hat off to him. We were standing out on the beach when an older guy rides up on his cruiser, strips down to his essentials and jumps right into the icy cold water for a swim. BigD figures he must be Russian. Or have brass balls.

I said goodbye to my friend and set my coordinates on the GPS for Tiburon for an appointment I had to see some silver.

Turn left on Arguello, the feminine voice commanded me gently in  her soft and sultry tone. I paid no attention and kept on driving. Turn left on second... having a problem with taking direction, I disobeyed this command and a host of other similar directives. Was I just imagining it or did I actually notice the GPS start to get a note of hostility and derision in her voice? The fourth time you ask, you program the things to start getting angry.

Maybe she would stop offering suggestions whatsoever if I was going to continue to be so truculent. I had a short daydream about a scenario where you keep disobeying the offered commands and the machine starts to smoke a little bit, getting more than a little hot under the chipset. Than you get a knock on the door from somebody from central command; Mr. Sommers, we have analyzed your file and you seem to have a little problem taking direction and submitting to the central authority. Perhaps the selective application of a few thousand volts in a certain personal geographic zone will allow us to engage in a quick behavior modification session that will give you pause to consider the benefits of being a team player? Bit more open and responsive to being a team player, now? 

Why did I get pleasure disobeying an inanimate box's verbal commands? Just a square peg who never liked being fit into a round hole, I guess. The gps finally got over its hurt and started offering me suggestions again and I eventually made my way to my destination. I had a thought. I had left Leslie's ipad at BigD's. Shit! Would have to drive back into the city.

The client's home was perched on a ridge with one of the most fantastic views of Marin you could ever see. Living there his whole life, it just seemed normal to him. Spent some really nice time out on his deck, enjoying the breeze and great weather on a beautiful December day. I drove back into the city in the twilight and picked up the ipad.

 It was at this point when I got hit with my first traffic meltdown of the week. I had dinner plans in Berkeley. BigD lives off Geary past Japan Town. Going east on Euclid to get to the bridge was a nightmare. It took me almost two hours to make it to Battery Street. Traffic was moving about one foot every six minutes. People were sounding their horns in frustration but there was nothing anyone could do. To make matters worse, a shithead or two in their PT Cruisers tried the popular new trick of squeezing in on the right in a lane that did not in fact exist. I seriously thought about jumping out and engaging in an act of pure urban homicide.

Finally made it to Gary and Melissa's pad in Rockridge. We went out to one of my two favorite haunts in the Bay Area, Le Cheval. Or its new incarnation LCX anyway. Le Cheval got hosed by a nasty landlord last year who got herself embroiled in some of her own legal difficulties and they had to find a new location.  LCX is just down the block and I like it even better. Phenomenal french vietnamese cuisine. More intimate room. Started off with quail in their great dipping sauce. Bursting with flavor, juicy and awesome, gorgeous amber color. We ordered a deep fried whole seabass or ca chien, pork chops marinated in lemongrass oil, and a claypot dish. If you have never had a claypot, they are the bomb. Prawns, chicken, zucchini, beef, mushrooms, broccoli and rice pan fried and then baked. We asked for it a bit burnt and crispy. The rice caramelizes on the pot and gets a perfect crunch.

The dinner was just superb. We ordered perfectly. The food here is the best, cheap, hot and delicious. The staff is great, I have no complaints, whatsoever and I complain a lot.

I had a lot of people to see and unfortunately wasn't able to. Wanted to see Ron L. and KerryB. The next morning I had coffee and read the NYT with my friends and made my way south to stop by and see my friend Jay at a comic book store in Santa Clara for a second. I put the thing on GPS and it started leading me over a toll bridge, the Dumbarton. This GPS was going to now cost me five unnecessary bucks. I thought that I had better keep my mouth shut since she and I had so many problems the day before.

It was smart. She led me to the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge. I parked my cat at the La Riviere marsh and walked around a marsh walk company of a lot of nice bird life, including a few lovely white egrets. Felt good to stretch my legs.

Drove back through Gilroy and the Pacheco pass, overdosed on dried nectarines and pears from Casa de Fruta. Took seemingly forever to get home, I was exhausted and tried to take a five minute nap at every rest stop. Hit monster traffic on both the 210 and 91 and ended up getting off both and taking side streets.

Got back close to nine. Took hours longer than it should have. For all the driving I do to the Bay you would think that it would get easier but it never does. I rented a Dodge Avenger this trip, not bad, didn't want to put more miles on the van. And now, in the immortal words of Sam Gamgee, I am back.